I am senior fellow for environment policy at the Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News. I write about energy and environment issues, frequently focusing on global warming. I have presented environmental analysis on CNN, CNN Headline News, CBS Evening News, MSNBC, Fox News Channel, and several national radio programs. My environmental analysis has been published in virtually every major newspaper in the United States. I studied atmospheric science and majored in government at Dartmouth College. I obtained my Juris Doctorate from Syracuse University.

It is becoming clear that not only do many scientists dispute the asserted global warming crisis, but these skeptical scientists may indeed form a scientific consensus.

Don’t look now, but maybe a scientific consensus exists concerning global warming after all. Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.

The survey results show geoscientists (also known as earth scientists) and engineers hold similar views as meteorologists. Two recent surveys of meteorologists (summarized here and here) revealed similar skepticism of alarmist global warming claims.

According to the newly published survey of geoscientists and engineers, merely 36 percent of respondents fit the “Comply with Kyoto” model. The scientists in this group “express the strong belief that climate change is happening, that it is not a normal cycle of nature, and humans are the main or central cause.”

The authors of the survey report, however, note that the overwhelming majority of scientists fall within four other models, each of which is skeptical of alarmist global warming claims.

The survey finds that 24 percent of the scientist respondents fit the “Nature Is Overwhelming” model. “In their diagnostic framing, they believe that changes to the climate are natural, normal cycles of the Earth.” Moreover, “they strongly disagree that climate change poses any significant public risk and see no impact on their personal lives.”

Another group of scientists fit the “Fatalists” model. These scientists, comprising 17 percent of the respondents, “diagnose climate change as both human- and naturally caused. ‘Fatalists’ consider climate change to be a smaller public risk with little impact on their personal life. They are skeptical that the scientific debate is settled regarding the IPCC modeling.” These scientists are likely to ask, “How can anyone take action if research is biased?”

The next largest group of scientists, comprising 10 percent of respondents, fit the “Economic Responsibility” model. These scientists “diagnose climate change as being natural or human caused. More than any other group, they underscore that the ‘real’ cause of climate change is unknown as nature is forever changing and uncontrollable. Similar to the ‘nature is overwhelming’ adherents, they disagree that climate change poses any significant public risk and see no impact on their personal life. They are also less likely to believe that the scientific debate is settled and that the IPCC modeling is accurate. In their prognostic framing, they point to the harm the Kyoto Protocol and all regulation will do to the economy.”

The final group of scientists, comprising 5 percent of the respondents, fit the “Regulation Activists” model. These scientists “diagnose climate change as being both human- and naturally caused, posing a moderate public risk, with only slight impact on their personal life.” Moreover, “They are also skeptical with regard to the scientific debate being settled and are the most indecisive whether IPCC modeling is accurate.”

Taken together, these four skeptical groups numerically blow away the 36 percent of scientists who believe global warming is human caused and a serious concern.

One interesting aspect of this new survey is the unmistakably alarmist bent of the survey takers. They frequently use terms such as “denier” to describe scientists who are skeptical of an asserted global warming crisis, and they refer to skeptical scientists as “speaking against climate science” rather than “speaking against asserted climate projections.” Accordingly, alarmists will have a hard time arguing the survey is biased or somehow connected to the ‘vast right-wing climate denial machine.’

Another interesting aspect of this new survey is that it reports on the beliefs of scientists themselves rather than bureaucrats who often publish alarmist statements without polling their member scientists. We now have meteorologists, geoscientists and engineers all reporting that they are skeptics of an asserted global warming crisis, yet the bureaucrats of these organizations frequently suck up to the media and suck up to government grant providers by trying to tell us the opposite of what their scientist members actually believe.

People who look behind the self-serving statements by global warming alarmists about an alleged “consensus” have always known that no such alarmist consensus exists among scientists. Now that we have access to hard surveys of scientists themselves, it is becoming clear that not only do many scientists dispute the asserted global warming crisis, but these skeptical scientists may indeed form a scientific consensus.

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You clearly know squat about scientists or how scientific careers are made.

If a scientist could produce results that invalidated global warming (or germ theory or quantum mechanics or thermodynamics or general relativity or any other established theory) they would jump at the chance — it would be the opportunity of a hundred lifetimes, the kind of thing that wins Nobel prizes and makes you immortalized.

Any one of the top hundred or so climate scientists could easily triple their salaries by selling out to the fossil fuel industry and peddling lies for them. The fact that so few do is a testament to a general propensity for honesty among scientists and to the institutional strength of science in weeding out liars.

It is very, very, very, very hard to publish lies about nature when anyone, anywhere, with any agenda can replicate your experiments and reveal your deception.

Both my parents where scientists , who did research with PHDs….disproving other people is pretty much their favorite thing to do. And money telling you what the facts are is the main reason many scientists avoid politics. It is specifically the reason my parents both sited for going into research instead of business or politics…they hated that the facts didnt matter on the money did when they tried to talk to politicians and business people. It drove them nuts. That is how many if not the majority of scientists are, to get them to agree to something just for the money would be nearly impossible. Managing PHDs is like herding cats, anyone who has spent much time will tell you. For the majority in a field to agree on anything, takes a nearly impossible level of evidence, and even then they will spend most of their free time arguing the details.

OMG, James, you’ve outdone yourself AGAIN! The article you discuss here was trying to understand the opinions of “professional experts employed in the petroleum industry”, so it surveyed engineers and geoscientists employed in that industry! These are not primarily “scientists”–in the sense of objective reporters of empirical evidence–but “professionals” hired to carry out the tasks assigned to them by their employers. OF COURSE these people “are more likely to be sceptical of the IPCC and of anthropogenic climate change.” Not news.

What bothers me…and what should at least jiggle at your conscience, is the way you take the findings of a balanced piece of opinion/discourse research and turn it into an abjectly partisan and skewed piece of research and use it for your purposes (and the purposes of YOUR employer) without regard for the truth or the consequences of continued “spin.” Your columns are taken as “evidence” by deniers of ACC because they trust you to tell it like it is. (Gullibility seems especially rampant among your readers.) Unfortunately, you have no desire to speak the truth… You merely try to APPEAR to be using “research” in a truthful manner.

In other words, James, you’re a shyster of the worst kind. And your grandchildren and mine will not forgive you for it.

Thank you for the attention you are giving to our research and continuing the discussion about how professional engineers and geoscientists view climate change. We would like to emphasize a few points in order to avoid any confusion about the results.

First and foremost, our study is not a representative survey. Although our data set is large and diverse enough for our research questions, it cannot be used for generalizations such as “respondents believe …” or “scientists don’t believe …” Our research reconstructs the frames the members of a professional association hold about the issue and the argumentative patterns and legitimation strategies these professionals use when articulating their assumptions. Our research does not investigate the distribution of these frames and, thus, does not allow for any conclusions in this direction. We do point this out several times in the paper, and it is important to highlight it again.

In addition, even within the confines of our non-representative data set, the interpretation that a majority of the respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of global warming is simply not correct. To the contrary: the majority believes that humans do have their hands in climate change, even if many of them believe that humans are not the only cause. What is striking is how little support that the Kyoto Protocol had among our respondents. However, it is also not the case that all frames except “Support Kyoto” are against regulation – the “Regulation Activists” mobilize for a more encompassing and more strongly enforced regulation. Correct interpretations would be, for instance, that – among our respondents – more geoscientists are critical towards regulation (and especially the Kyoto Protocol) than non-geoscientists, or that more people in higher hierarchical positions in the industry oppose regulation than people in lower hierarchical positions.

All frequencies in our paper should only be used to get an idea of the potential influence of these frames – e.g. on policy responses. Surely the insight that those who oppose regulation tend to have more influence on policy-making than the supporters of the Kyoto Protocol should not come as a surprise after Canada dropped out of the protocol a year ago.

But once again: This is not a representative survey and should not be used as such!

We trust that this clarifies our findings. Thank you again for your attention.

While you may have read the paper, did you read the article? I’m not sure where one could find a lie in there. The majority of the article simply quotes the study or paraphrases what the original study said (you would know that if you really HAD read the study, as I did). If you would like to take umbrage with the writer for not saying that the respondents worked in the petroleum industry, that may be the only ‘omission of truth’, but the fact that 36% of them still feel strongly enough about AGW to support ‘Comply With Kyoto’ sort of undermines any argument about workers in the petroleum industry marching in lockstep to the anti-AGW point-of-view. And while I respect the study authors’ statement above about using their data to make generalized statements, it’s very easy to see that Mr. Taylor is not using the data to make statements about scientists in general, he is simply summarizing the findings of the study of these particular respondents. The fact that he doesn’t say,” the scientists in this survey’ every time he references the respondents is perfectly in line with general writing protocol of this nature — that the ‘scientists’ he references are the ones in the survey is assumed as one reads the article. His point at the end is that in this survey we have an example of what happens when you actually ask the scientists what they think, as with the other two surveys he cites in the article. Again, I don’t see where he is trying to extrapolate beyond what is shown in the study. Would you care to pony up some examples of where Mr. Taylor has lied, or are you content to point fingers, then run and hide?

How about this gem: “Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. ”

The survey was not peer-reviewed, and the respondents were self-selected petroleum engineers, not geoscientists.